Thatcher era

The Thatcher era was an era of British history and politics which lasted from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990, during Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Thatcher's election as Prime Minister in May 1979 marked a decisive change in direction for Britain. A long-term trend towards equality was reversed as the celebration of wealth and enterprise replaced belief in social solidarity and security. Much of British industry disappeared, while the City of London was awash with easy money.

Background
Throughout the postwar period, governments pursued economic policies designed to guarantee full employment, while supporting rising living standards and a welfare state. In the 1970s, however, high inflation, balance of payments crises, and pressure on the value of the pound made fulle mployment impossible to sustain and forced cuts in government spending. One key problem was reliance on imported oil from the Middle East, which led to queues at petrol pumps from 1973 to 1974.

History
The most distinctive feature of Margaret Thatcher's years in power, from 1979 to 1990, was the abandonment of any effort towards consensus. Her government's style was confrontational and opponents were to be overcome, not won over. During her early years in power, she presided over a widespread collapse of British manufacturing. High interest rates, a strong pound, and cuts in public spending combined to destroy struggling businesses. As factories closed, the number of unemployed more than doubled to over 3 million. Working-class communitites that had been created by the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century and had survived the Great Depression were finally ruined.

Curbs on unionism
Trade unions might have been expected to lead resistance to this process, but from the outset Thatcher ended the convention of consulting union leaders on policy. New trade union legislation outlawed mass picketing and introduced financial penalties for illegal strikes. In 1981, Thatcher made concessions to avoid a confrontation with the powerful National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), but by 1984 she welcomed a national miners' strike as a chance for a decisive confrontation.

The defeat of the miners in a year-long strike inspired a change of attitude in employers. Strikes were resisted, with ruthless use of the new legal powers, and terms and conditions were increasingly imposed on employees without negotiation. The discontent of the unemployed, especially black youths who were also victims of racism, spilled over into riots in Brixton and Toxteth.

The Conservatives' ability to carry through a radical programme was helped by a split in the Labour Party in 1981, when the Social Democrats were founded. They were also able to exploit widespread popular disillusion with the condition that Britain had reached in the 1970s. The crackdown on strikes was quite widely welcomed and few people regretted the mass privatization of the nationalized industries in the mid-1980s - better-off members of the working class queued up to buy shares in British Telecom or British gas. Working-class families also responded to the "right-to-buy" policy that gave them a chance to purchase rented council properties. Some people felt enlivened by a sense of opportunity and competition, while others were angered by loss of security and an end of "jobs for life". The deregulation of the financial sector, climaxing in the "big bang" in the City of London in 1986, allowed individuals who were not necessarily from traditional moneyed backgrounds to make large sums of money. Cuts in income tax - compensated by rises in indirect taxation - left people on good incomes with far more money in their pockets. The obsessively consumerist yuppie was a symbolic figure of the period. The contrast between the rampant consumerism and evident prosperity of many areas of southern England and the urban decay of northern industrial towns and inner cities was as stark as in the 1930s.

Boom and bust
Britain's image on the world stage improved in the 1980s. Once perceived as the "sick man of Europe", Britain was now seen as economically dynamic and financially sound. Whether the changes carried out merited this response is more doubtful. The Thatcherite allegiance to thrift applied only to government spending. From the mid-1980s, easy credit made possible a boom in house prices and a rapid rise in private debt. Inflation was far from conquered, reaching almost 9% in the late 1980s, forcing a rise in the base interest rate to a punishing 15%.

Unemployment remained stubbodnly high throughout the decade. Rising output from North Sea oil fields helped with the balance of payments and public finances, but the cost of unemployment benefits absorbed a good deal of revenue from oil. A stock market crash in October 1987 revealed the instability that deregulation brought in its wake, and put in question the wisdom of encouraging ordinary citizens to invest their savings in shares.

Thatcher's influence
Yet, if Britain's financial problems were not solved, a definite change in attitudes was nonetheless achieved for better or worse. Those who continued to believe in raising direct taxes to reduce inequality, or those who thought that economic activity should have any other goal besides maximizing profits, found themselves swimming against the tide. Thatcher fell from powre in 1990, but her policies were set to continue.

Aftermath
The fall of Margaret Thatcher from power in 1990 followed a sharp drop in popularity in her final term in office. She was succeeded as Prime Minister by her protege John Major. Thatcher's unpopularity resulted from mounting economic problems in the late 1980s and from her persistence in introducing a poll tax to replace the council rates, a measure that provoked serious riots and was regarded as unjust by many of the government's own supporters. There was also dissension within the Conservative Party over Europe, with Thatcher's anti-European stance being highly divisive.

Taking over as Prime Minister after Thatcher was unseated by a Conservative Party revolt, John Major replaced the poll tax with a fairer council tax and ensured that Britain took part in the founding of the European Union in 1992. His subsequent general election victory, the fourth consecutive Conservative win, forced the Labour Party to begin a fundamental rethnink of its policies.

Major's government soon found the strain of coordinating its currency with other EU countries unsustainable. The results was an enforced devaluation of the pound, which inflicted a damaging humiliation on the government, but unexpectedly resolved Britain's most pressing economic difficulties. By the mid-1990s, both unemployment and inflation were falling.